


Contractual Obligations

by Engineer104



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst, Demon Deals, Demon Summoning, Demons, F/M, May be continued i dunno, no beta we die, not like men we just die, this feels so rushed i'm sorry ;_;
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 11:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21117716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: Annette summons a demon, but he refuses to accept her contract.





	Contractual Obligations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starrymatcha](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=starrymatcha).

> inspired by an extremely detailed idea bandied about in the felannie Discord. i may or may not continue this, but i was bitten by the writing bug and had to get something out there or go mad (so to speak)
> 
> enjoy!! <s>and don't hate me too much for that cliffhanger</s>

Annette checked the summoning circle for the twelfth - or was it the thirteenth? - time. She nudged the tray of sage closer to the center before reconsidering and pushing it back. She scrutinized and squinted at every last mark of white chalk on the ugly laminate floor of her living room, comparing it to her preliminary sketch.

“One candle at each point…” Her gaze flitted to each corner of the pentagram, counting them and smiling in relief when she found five.

(Which was no more nor no fewer than she had _last_ time she counted.)

The little orange flames flickered on the wicks, casting deep shadows throughout the apartment. The candles released the faint scent of cookie dough - at least the summoning didn’t require a particular sort of candle…she’d verified at least three times - into the air.

She hummed as she paced around the circle one last time, careful not to tread on and smudge the chalk with her socks; oh, it would be just like her to botch her experiment through her own clumsiness.

Her heart raced when she crouched at one point of the pentagram. Annette could barely believe she was resorting to a summoning. If she was caught - which was to say nothing of if the summoning itself went wrong - she could be arrested, or forfeit her magic, or _worse_.

Well, Annette was getting desperate, and if there was one sure way to track another mage-blood, she needed a contract with a powerful demon.

She slid her blindfold over her face - a demon was at its most powerful the instant it materialized and she would not risk one stealing her soul thanks to some chance eye contact - and clutched her amulet, reaching for the deepest reserves of power in her blood. Her eyes slipped shut as it filled her with its familiar heat, and the incantation that she painstakingly studied and memorized for weeks spilled from her lips.

At the first hint of sulfur, Annette shoved her blindfold into her hair, in time to watch the candle flames flash white and rise high into the air. She squinted against the sudden light, her eyes burning, but as quickly as they flared the flames sputtered out with a quiet hiss of smoke.

Annette let out a shuddering breath. “Did…?” An eerie silence filled the apartment.

“Saints,” she cursed, sighing. Disappointment made her heart heavy, but she couldn’t wallow in her failure with a mess to clean up. She slowly climbed to her feet, her legs shaking with the effort after expending so much magic. She steadily tripped her way over a fallen throw pillow to the light switch.

When she turned around, her heart jumped into her throat at the sight before her.

A young man - or something that _looked_ like a young man - knelt at the center of her summoning circle, with skin shockingly pale even in the washed out yellow light of her living room and dark hair tied in a loose bun. A sword with a blade as black as the nighttime sea stuck up from the floor - her landlord would not be pleased with the gouge it must’ve cut into the laminate - in front of him, and despite how suddenly he’d appeared and his almost resentful rusty gaze he looked like a picture from an old novel.

“It _worked_?” Annette gasped once she recovered from her shock.

The man’s eyes - his pupils were slitted like a cat’s, she noticed - narrowed at her. “Why do you sound so surprised?” he asked in a low voice. “You _did_ summon me, didn’t you?”

Her jaw flapped uselessly, searching for something to say because _Saint Cethleann__’s staff _there was a _demon _in her living room.

Oh, Saints, oh goddess, oh _Saints_, her landlord would find out and report her to the Knights and she would be dragged before the archbishop and she hadn’t even forged a contract with the demon yet! Oh, what if—

A snap of fingers jerked her from her spiraling thoughts, and she lifted her face to find the demon scowling at her. “If all you’re going to do is stare into nothing, then you may as well dismiss me.”

“What?” Annette gaped at him before shaking her head to clear it. “No, I did not go through all that trouble summoning you just to dismiss you! Your appearance just startled me, that’s all.”

“Right.” The demon sat cross-legged in the circle, onyx sword laid out across his lap. His right hand, clutching the hilt, glowed with a dim light in the shape of the Crest of Fraldarius.

Wait…why would a demon have a Crest?

She frowned and sat opposite him, careful not to disturb the circle lest she dismiss him by accident. So long as the circle held, he would stay in her apartment; only a contract with a witch like her could bind him to this plane of existence.

Banishment was Saint Seiros’ curse on demons, after all.

“So you summoned me,” the demon said with a sigh as if resigned to his fate. “Congratulations.”

“Uh…thanks?” Annette said lamely. She blinked at him but failed to meet his eyes; he seemed to look past her, gaze flicking to and from her face without lingering. She opened her mouth to add something - she’d prepared a whole speech! - but the words dried up.

“What’s the blindfold for?” the demon wondered. He gestured to the top of his head.

Annette stared. “The…” She reached up until her fingers found the blindfold - really just a sleeping mask - tangled in her hair. “Oh, it was just a precaution,” she explained with a sheepish smile.

“A precaution?” The demon frowned, his eerily human expression one of confusion. “Against what? Did you worry my appearance would blind you?”

Her face warmed; would he be offended? She picked at a loose thread in the hem of her skirt. “Well, uh, I didn’t want to accidentally make eye contact with you.”

“Why would you need to take precautions against that?”

“Because if you’re at your most powerful you can capture my soul through just an instant of eye contact, obviously.”

The demon stared at her, not even bothering to disguise his distaste at her words.

Oh, good, she _did_ manage to offend him. So much for convincing him to enter into a contract with her…

“I expect such superstitions from mortals,” the demon said, rolling his eyes, “but not from a mage-blood like you.”

Annette crossed her arms and bit her lip, unable to help the slight welling of shame within her. “All right, fine, I suppose I should’ve known better,” she admitted, “but in my defense every book I found on demons and summoning warned that I could forfeit my soul if I made eye contact with you for even a second!”

The demon snorted - his mannerisms were so strangely _human_ \- and said, “What good would your soul do me anyway? It’s your blood that has power.”

“Then…” Annette took a deep, bracing breath; now was the time to make her proposition. “Would you enter into a contract with me?”

He flinched, instantly recoiling from her. The Crest on the back of his hand flared with an agitated white light, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his black sword. “No,” he all but spat. “I refuse.”

“Why else would I have summoned you?” Annette wondered, refusing to let his immediate denial deter her. She’d expected some resistance - planned for it, even - but his vehemence still startled her.

“Curiosity,” the demon said. “Just to see that you could. I don’t know!” He growled, baring white teeth as his gaze roved across the room as if to search for some escape route. “How should I know why you would summon me? And doesn’t your mage-blood church forbid demon-binding contracts?”

“Well…yes,” Annette said, heart thumping at the reminder, “but I think the risk is worth it.”

“Well, I don’t!” the demon protested. He jumped to his feet, pupils dilated in obvious alarm, and said, “Dismiss me.”

She followed suit, facing him with the summoning circle between them. He towered over her by more than a head, but she’d never let something like superior height intimated her. “No.”

He raised his sword, the tip pointing at her heart. “_Dismiss me, mage-blood._”

She swallowed, reminding herself that with the circle intact he couldn’t hurt her no matter how much he wanted to. “I will not,” Annette insisted.

“Very well.” The demon sheathed his sword and crossed his arms, turning his back to her. “But I still refuse.”

“_Why_?” she demanded. His obstinacy rankled her; she thought a demon would jump at the opportunity to explore a realm outside their own. “It would hardly be painful for you since we’d both get something out of it.”

“It’s none of your concern why,” he said almost mildly, “but I don’t bind myself to mage-bloods.”

“You—fine!” Her voice pitched embarrassingly high as she threw her hands into the air. “Refuse my contract - even though I haven’t made the offer yet! - and stay in that circle forever for all I care!” She turned on her heel, grumbling with her heart furiously pounding against her ribs. “I guess I won’t be inviting Mercie over anytime soon…”

The demon huffed but didn’t acknowledge her.

Oh, he was already driving Annette crazy.

* * *

The mage-blood drove Felix crazy.

She’d been kind enough to pass him a chair so he at least had something to sit on inside his white summoning circle, but every morning before she left the apartment and every evening when she returned she, without fail, wondered if he’d reconsidered.

And every time she asked he, without fail, declined.

This stalemate between them was an awfully dull existence.

Still, he couldn’t say he wasn’t glad to be back in the Split Realm after years away. He’d even relished in the pleasantly cold breeze against his hot skin when the mage-blood forgot to close the living room window one evening, though he could do without the sickly sweet-smelling candles she liked to burn for her spells.

Since she summoned him, he learned her name was Annette, she liked singing nonsensical tunes when she cleaned but would clam up and blush pink - he’d forgotten they could _do_ that - the instant she remembered his presence, and she bore a Crest.

“Why do you want to bind me anyway?” Felix worked up the nerve to ask her one evening while she buzzed around the apartment in search of something she’d lost. He leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs before falling back down onto four. “You have a Crest, so why do you need me?”

“How else am I supposed to find another mage-blood?” Annette replied, a slight tremor in her voice. “Even just the tracking spell needs more power than I have, and what if there are…obstacles?”

Felix frowned at her - or rather at her back. “What do you foresee?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged as she turned back towards him. “It’s just…” She sighed and clutched a tome - maybe what she’d so frantically searched for - to her chest before admitting, “He’s…hard to find, and none of the usual conventional means are working, which means someone’s blocking him from my view somehow.”

“Maybe he’s dead,” Felix said. “Mage-bloods don’t live much longer than mortals.”

“He’s not dead,” Annette protested immediately, her blue eyes sharp on him. “I’d know. Instead it’s like every spell I cast to find him hits a, hits a wall, like something’s keeping him from my sight or—”

“Or he doesn’t want to be found.”

Annette froze, and for one long heartbeat Felix wondered if he’d finally done it, if he finally angered her enough that she would dismiss him without a second thought. Oddly that outcome didn’t appeal to him as it once did, but—

She crumpled, her grip on the book tightening and her eyes downcast. “Maybe you’re right,” she agreed, “but isn’t it still worth a try? Surely even demons have families; surely you understand.”

Felix rested his hand against his chest and swallowed. His fingers clutched at the hilt of his sword, rendered useless while he was confined to this white circle of chalk but a reassuring weight at his side all the same.

_Surely even demons have families._

Well, not him, not anymore, thanks to that filthy mage-blood…

He sighed and licked his lips before standing and drawing as close to her as the circle allowed him. “Mage—I mean, Annette?”

“What,” she said flatly without looking at him.

Felix could scarcely believe he was doing this, not after swearing to his brother’s nonexistent corpse that he would never make the same mistake as him, yet he extended his hand. His Crest shimmered, reacting to the potential Annette offered him.

“State your terms.”

Her head jerked up, shining blue eyes wide in disbelief. “A-are you sure?”

_No_. “Yes,” he said, nodding.

“A-and what are your terms?” Annette asked. “It goes both ways, doesn’t it?”

Felix blinked, surprised; he hadn’t expected her to be so…considerate. Most mage-bloods weren’t in his experience. “I, well…” He bit his lip and said, “I’ll do as you say for the duration of the contract, but you have to promise me one thing.”

“What?” she said.

His eyes narrowed, and he forced himself to meet her curious gaze. “If I refuse to do something for you,” he said, “you won’t compel me.”

“Why would I do that?” Annette said, frowning. “I need your help, not your servitude.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” he muttered under his breath. Louder - not that he had his doubts that she heard him before - he said, “The contract allows you three command seals with which you can compel me to do anything.” He glared at her. “Promise you won’t use them.”

She stared at him before nodding and agreeing, “I won’t use the command seals, Felix. I promise.”

Felix knew what a non-binding spoken promise could be worth, but he chose to believe her. “That’s fine then,” he said. “Say your words.”

Annette flinched, almost as if she’d forgotten what she wanted from him. “I, uh, in the name of Sothis,” she recited, “and by the covenant of Seiros’ curse, I bind you, Felix, to my will. I bid you to lend me your power for my purpose, until the contract terminates upon the—upon my father’s return home or upon our mutual agreement.” She reached over the summoning circle’s invisible barrier and grasped his right hand, her palm warm against his.

His Crest flared even brighter, either its power or her touch sending heat shooting up his arm. “In the name of Sothis and by the covenant of Sothis’ curse,” Felix echoed, “I accept your binding and your contract. Annette, let your will be mine and my power be yours until the contract terminates upon your father’s return home or upon our mutual agreement.”

His whole body flooded with the heat of his magic, tempered by something cooler he instantly recognized as Annette’s essence. It filled his limbs with an irresistible energy.

Annette held his gaze, pinning him in place, her pupils dilated with her own surge of power. Somehow he felt everything she did, almost feverish and ecstatic with the rush, the expanding of possibility and potential, all the things he - or she - could do now that he - or _she_ \- couldn’t before!

He - no, _she_ \- would work with Felix to find his - no, to find _her _father, to bring him home to her mother so they could be a proper family again, so he could reassure her he - _she_ wasn’t a disappointment and that she wasn’t the reason he left and—

Felix fell to his knees, his head spinning and his palm burning where it had clutched Annette’s. His stone heart raced in his chest - that was…an unexpected side effect - as he reached for his sword, angry and ready to lash out.

“Felix?” Annette said. “Are you—ow, does your head hurt too?”

Her voice reached him from faraway, as if his head was submerged underwater and she spoke to him from above. He looked up, scowling when his eyes met hers. “Your father…sounds like a bastard,” he grumbled.

Dark spots crowded his vision, and the last thing he heard before the living room vanished was Annette gasping his name.

**Author's Note:**

> _sweats_
> 
> thoughts??


End file.
